The Bacon Story Continues

I don't get it. I've lived a pretty healthy life.

     I watch what I eat. I exercise. I say my prayers before I go to bed at night. And yet, because of various clogged arteries, I've got to watch what I eat.

     My 94-year-old father, on the other hand, has eaten bacon pretty much every day of his long life. Give or take the time during World War Two when he was in the Philippines courtesy of Uncle Sam. But if there was bacon on that island, I'm sure my Dad found it.

     And HIS heart is fine and dandy, thank you very much. Not that I'm wishing him heart problems. I just wonder why, after all his smoking and drinking and bacon-eating, HE'S healthy as a horse, and after all my vitamins and organic foods and weight-lifting, I'M the one who ended up doing a Fred Sanford impersonation.
     Not only that, remember when I told you about how I threw out my back picking a weed from the backyard? Well, I just threw it out AGAIN giving my dog a bath. I'm the kind of guy who REFUSES to take pills, but it just goes to show you how much in pain I was that when my wife offered me a muscle relaxant... I took it. But I digress...

     My Dad likes bacon with his breakfast and beans with his dinner. In a restaurant, when he orders a cup of coffee, the waitress had better bring along a side of beans with it.

     In the last five years I don't think he hasn't been served bacon with his breakfast, more then once or twice. And when he goes to the doctor for his annual check-up or finger where fingers aren't supposed to go, he gets the All Clear.
     He wants his bacon. The only problem with giving him his bacon is that at the end of every year, around this time, he will complain about the bacon he has been eating for the previous twelve months.
     It's too thick.
     It's too thin.
     It's too salty.
     It's not salty enough.
     It's not Oscar Meyer.
     I hate Oscar Meyer.
     What happened to my Oscar Meyer?
     So, every year--around this time--my wife makes the mistake of listening to him and she changes the brand and cut of his bacon.

     Last week when she served him his breakfast with bacon, he not only told her he didn't like the it, didn't want it, but he also said, "That bacon..." (that he's been eating for over a year) "...you served me isn't any good. I don't like it. I don't want any of that bacon. Blah, blah, blah. Mumble, mumble, mumble." Smack, smack, smack! Click, click, click!

     "Hmm," I thought to myself, "with the cost of bacon going up, I might just be saving myself a few bucks." Now, if I can only get him to stop eating ice cream and desserts, I could really start save some serious cash.

     Anyway, later in the day I asked my wife, "What was that all about? He always eats bacon."

     She shakes her head and tells me (in her He's-YOUR-Dad tone of voice), "Well, the other day he got a piece of bacon stuck between his teeth and it bothered him all night long. He blames the bacon."
     "Did he floss?" I asked her, in all innocence.
     That's when she gave me her He's-YOUR-Dad look.

     So I checked the wrapper the bacon came in and it had a claim written on it. It said: "This bacon is guaranteed not to get stuck between the teeth of anyone over 96-years-old."

     I showed it to my Dad, but he just dismissed it.

     "I'm 95," he told me, but I really think he recognized my handwriting on the bacon wrapper. I guess I won't be pretending to write a complaint to that bacon company, after all. My Dad is a very amusing individual to live with. I often wonder what nonsense he's going to come up with next.
     The water he drinks makes him go to the bathroom too often at night?
     I know that's what happens to me.
 
 

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